


In the Dark Hours of the Morning

by implicated2



Category: Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Multiple Pov, Podfic Available, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/implicated2/pseuds/implicated2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might have happened at the Moon Squadron Aerodrome, and what certainly happened after.</p>
<p>A missing passage from Verity's account. Spoilers for all of Code Name Verity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprat/gifts).



> With much gratitude to [raspberryhunter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter) for a generous and insightful beta.
> 
> References to canon violence and canon character death.
> 
> If you'd like to listen to this story as a podfic, [Luzula](http://luzula.dreamwidth.org) has created an excellent one, availalble [here](http://luzula.dreamwidth.org/150984.html).

Did I say Maddie never let go, that night I cried myself to sleep at the Moon Squadron aerodrome? It's hard to remember details when there's a bloody brute of a German guard pressing cigarettes to the back of one's neck. There is, I am sure, one part of the story I haven't told. Very well then, no doubt the Hauptsturmführer will be delighted to have his flute music sheets filled with sensational tales of what friends do in dark hours.

It was just barely dawn when Maddie woke up sobbing. In her dream, it was Hitler himself whose fist was closing around Queenie's throat, with the whole of Occupied France—laid out before them like a map—watching in motionless horror. Maddie herself could see it all from Scotland (dear of her to imagine herself there), and she was certain she could help her friend if only she could reach.

Maddie's arm was trapped under Queenie's weight, but she was straining forwards, ready to claw apart the Führer himself if need be. She kicked and thrashed and yelped, but when she woke, it was to her friend's gentle hand on her cheek, to a whisper of “Maddie, Maddie, you're dreaming.”

That Queenie should be comforting her after all she'd suffered was too much for Maddie to bear. “I'm awake,” she cried, shaking her trembling arm. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, and Queenie, just barely visible in the curtained room, shook her head in answer.

There was a silence between them then, both weary, both afraid, each, in her own way, trying to be brave. And then Queenie, almost absently, swept her hair back over her shoulder and laid open the top button of her WAAF pajamas. Even in the near-dark, Maddie could make out the thumbprints on her neck. Wanting only to soothe her friend, she drew her fingers up and brought them, light as a whisper, to the raw ring of bruises. They were quiet again then, Maddie's callused fingertips feather-light against her friend's tender skin, Queenie's soft breathing the only sound in the whole of the Moon Squadron Cottage.

What Maddie forgot—what she'd only just learned—was that her friend Eva Seiler was a master of seduction. Just that night, she'd made an enemy soldier fall weeping to his knees. What chance had a kind-hearted lady pilot against the interrogator's charm? Queenie's fingers let a second button fall open, and then she covered her friend's hand with her own and brought those careful, callused fingertips to her lips.

Did Maddie think it was her own idea, what came next? Lips against lips, bodies crushed together, fingers roaming and stroking and sliding? She touched her friend with all the gentleness and care she'd have given the throttles and knobs of a pilot's controls. And Queenie was shameless with her purrs of pleasure, her gasps of surprise.

(She was pleased. But she was not surprised. You see, she'd engineered everything.)

Is that enough for you, Hauptsturmführer von Linden? Shall I tell you how we celebrated our reunion the day Maddie picked me up in her Puss Moth? Of our stolen kiss in the air above Mont St. Michel? Shall I tell you how fervently I dreamed of us together at Craig Castle, how I'd read to her in my old bed from Kim until she fell asleep, Maddie in my arms this time?

Oh, I've said too much. As always, I've said too much. But perhaps Engel will see fit to skip this part in her translation. I've told nothing of airfields or wireless codes, after all. I've only written to remember.


	2. Chapter 2

It's the oddest thing.

I didn't kiss Julie that night. Didn't touch her bruises, didn't stroke her like a flight panel. If I had, I don't know if I could have been as gentle as she tells it. But when I read Julie's story of it, on the folded sheets of flute music Anna Engel gave me that day we walked together by the river, I can almost remember every moment.

“You might not thank me,” Engel warned, when she slipped them into my pocket with the drawings of the Château des Bourreaux. If she thought Julie's story would shock me, she was wrong, but I'm not sure I'm better off having read it either. Funny how I never thought of touching Julie that way before. Now, when it's utterly impossible, I think of it all the time.

The only thing I can't understand is Julie's dream of reading to me at Craig Castle. It's a pleasure to imagine falling asleep together again, but why Kim? We've both read it already, and I for one am dead tired of spy stories. It's such an odd choice that I can't help but wonder if it's meant as a message. Julie's lady mother has invited me to visit her, and though I'm not sure I can bear her kindness, I've said yes. If there's something Julie wanted me to find there, the least I can do is try.

 

There are two libraries at Craig Castle. I meant to try and get away most of the day to see what I could find there, but there kept being Lost Boys to feed, and Lady Beaufort-Stuart—Esmé, she's asked me to call her Esmé—got me talking about engines, and then about Ormaie. Jamie arrived in the afternoon, and the three of us got to blubbing almost immediately, so it wasn't until after supper that I managed to follow Jamie to the small library he uses as sleeping quarters.

I couldn't find Kim anywhere. Most of the books were histories or children's stories, and there was only so much looking I could do without telling Jamie what I was looking for. It's not that I think Julie's left anything terribly secret (though maybe she has), it's just that I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. I know I'll be dead disappointed if I leave here empty-handed.

 

Looked in the big library tonight, and spotted Kim almost straight away. Jamie was with me, so I tried to take it casually, but when I first laid eyes on it, I let out a gasp so big I think the whole castle may have heard. I've been looking through it for the last hour, searching for some hint, but it's all just lamas and spies. I'll keep looking. It's bound to be in here somewhere.

           

Nothing. I've searched through it page by page, but either I'm wrong about Julie sending me here or else I've missed something completely. I'm glad I came to Craig Castle; it's a pleasure to be here with Jamie and Lady Beaufort-Stuart—Esmé—but I can't shake the feeling that Julie wanted to tell me something and I've missed it. Kim was a clue, I know it was, but I can't solve the puzzle, and I can't decide which I hate more: letting Julie down or losing all hope that there's anything left to hear from her.

I'm smearing ink everywhere. I miss my Eterpen.

           

It's stories.

It's STORIES. I've been reading nonstop since just after supper, first all of them through, then the stack I brought down to Jamie, and now, well past midnight, the one I kept for myself. It's too beautiful and too agonizing to see her handwriting on new pages, to hear every single word in her voice. I'll show Lady Beaufort-Stuart—Esmé—tomorrow. It's thanks to her I found them at all.

The boys were outside and it was just the three of us in the kitchen. Esmé's been making special meals since I've been here, and it's so terribly kind I almost don't know what to do. We were reminiscing, and then there was one of those silences, and just to keep us all from falling to pieces again, I suppose, Jamie told his mother, “Maddie's been reading Kipling.”

Esmé got a faraway sad look. “My two daughters,” she said, and she reached out to touch me on the shoulder. “Last time Julie was here, she left a school book in her vanity table. She couldn't be bothered to stop reading while she powdered her face.” And I knew. The second she'd said it, I knew.

It's hard to imagine Julie cutting open a book, but there was a second copy in the library, after all, and perhaps she'd had enough of Kipling and his wars. It's frightfully easy, in any case, to picture her nestling a secret under a pile of lipsticks and powders. And there it was, top drawer on the left, pages hollowed out to hide a folded stack, ink-stained and just a shade brittle. When I lifted the papers out of the ruined book, I almost whooped for joy.

It's no surprise Julie was a writer, when I think about it, but she'd written SO MUCH. There were sixty-four pages (I counted) of a quite scandalous romance between an actor and a French _comtesse_. There was one nearly as long about a very reckless and very brave Scottish lass who sacrificed herself at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Then there were a biting and terribly funny few pages about a Mr. and Mrs. MacGregor, who Jamie tells me are a roundly detested pair of local shopkeepers.

The story I kept for myself was almost identical to the one on Anna Engel's flute pages. Julie came to me at the Moon Squadron aerodrome with bruises on her neck, and I—the Maddie in the story—touched her gently and then passionately. How strange it is, how at once comforting and terrible, to think of Julie imagining that night in the same bed where I'm now remembering her story as if it were true.

It's dead late now. I've reread nearly everything, and I'm loath to finish reading a second time. One day, when this war is over, I will find Anna Engel and thank her for her part in sending me here. Tonight, there's nothing left to do but remember.

I'll just read the letter she left me once more. Once more, and then I'll try and let myself sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_Dearest Maddie,_

_Well, you have them now. At least, I hope you do, that you're alive, and that one of those lovable, egg-faced Glaswegians hasn't got to them first. And I hope you don't, that I can one day share these pages with you in person, but you know as well as I do the life expectancy of a spy behind enemy lines._

_I've never shown my writings to anyone. Not because I am keeping them secret; I simply never got around to it, and I've only just now realized I might have missed my chance. Maybe it's foolish to hope that you'll find them here, that whatever happens to me, you'll make your way back to Craig Castle and discover my cache of papers waiting. But I don't care. I simply cannot imagine it any other way._

_Can you picture me, Maddie, seeming to take notes at my Swiss boarding school and in fact adding pages to the exploits of Mme. Celeste and her rake of an actor? Did you find them terribly impractical and tiresome, or did you take pleasure in Celeste's easy flirtations, her bubbling wit? Did she remind you of anyone, I wonder? (What I mean is, if I'm dead, did she help you remember me?)_

_What did you make, I wonder, of Maddie and Julie, the ones on the page, who held each other close and kissed just after dawn? I thought for a long time about whether to leave these pages for you, and, in the end, I told myself I'd do it for your sake, in case, in the time between that night and now, you've imagined something similar. In that case, I told myself, you might find it comforting to know you weren't alone in your imaginings._

_But the truth is much more simple and more selfish: I have written this story and left it for you because it pleases me to imagine that night as I've written it, because I imagine it more vividly when I write and more vividly still when I think of you as its reader. But if it doesn't please you, perhaps you will take Maddie and Julie's kisses simply as a literary device, as the best way hours of scribbling about minor French nobles has prepared me to express my devotion to you, my depth of feeling._

_If I'm honest, though, what I fear most is not that my story will displease you, but that it will cause you to believe that you've failed me somehow by only (only!) holding me through the night. Maddie, I know it is POSSIBLE you might let me down, but you haven't once yet and I find it nearly impossible to think that you ever will. If my silly imaginings tell you otherwise, I hope you will do me the favor of destroying these pieces of paper; they will be what have failed me._

_I leave tonight—I can't tell you for where—and it's impossible to think how to close this letter, knowing it is meant to be a goodbye. I think of Nelson saying, “Kiss me, Hardy,” of Edith Cavell wishing herself free of bitterness and hatred. But mostly I think of you, holding me that night at the aerodrome, and I hope that sometimes, in the dark hours of the morning, you will think of us that night—the real one or the imagined—and remember._

_Yours always,_

_Julia Lindsay MacKenzie Wallace Beaufort-Stuart_


End file.
